Did you know that Aragorn from "Lord of the Rings" drives a Ford Fusion in real life?

It's one of many interesting tidbits from a new Esquire cover story about Watertown High School and St. Lawrence University graduate Viggo Mortensen. The actor picked up writer Lisa DePaulo at Syracuse Hancock International Airport and drove her in his rental car to his hometown of Watertown and back as she interviewed him about his new movie "Captain Fantastic."

"Two and a half hours into our journey, Mortensen and I stop for coffee at a joint he likes because his mother used to go there as a teenager," DePaulo writes. "The place is packed with a lunchtime crowd. We sit at the bar, and no one seems to recognize him, not even the pretty bartendress he chats up about Syracuse basketball."

Of course, one waitress did recognize him -- but as her classmate, not the Hollywood star who was nominated for an Oscar for the 2007 gritty crime thriller "Eastern Promises." She wanted to know if he was coming to their 40th high school reunion in July.

Mortensen, who lives in Madrid with his girlfriend, Spanish actress Ariadna Gil, had been in Watertown for weeks to be by his dying father's side. He did the same thing last year when his mother died.

"He's a tough son of a bitch," the 57-year-old actor told Esquire of his father. "He rallied."

The interview took place mostly in the car, though they made stops at an unidentified Upstate New York waterfall, a diner by Lake Ontario, and a pharmacy to pick up medicine to bring to Mortensen's father at his Watertown farmhouse.

Watertown High School graduate Viggo Mortensen played Aragorn in "The Lord of the Rings."New Line Productions

Altogether, the round trip took eight hours as they discussed why his obsession with death ("I guess living in the countryside, I might've learned about it earlier"); how his parents met (mom Grace was from Watertown and met Viggo Sr., a Danish farmer, on a trip to Norway); why he hand-picks smaller films after the original "LOTR" trilogy made him a star ("I mean, how much f---ing money do you need?") and how he fears he'll get dementia one day, just like both of his parents.

The rest of the interview can be read in the June-July 2016 issue of Esquire magazine, on newsstands May 31.

Mortensen's new film "Captain Fantastic" opens July 8 in theaters. He plays a father raising his six children off the grid in the Pacific Northwest when tragedy forces them to re-enter society.

The actor's other credits include 1985's "Witness," where he played an Amish farmer; 1990's "Leatherface: Texas Chainsaw Massacre III"; 1995's "Crimson Tide"; 2005's "A History of Violence"; 2009's "The Road"; and three "The Lord of the Rings" movies as Aragorn, a J.R.R. Tolkien character who led the Fellowship of the Ring on a quest to Mordor.